raleigh north carolina

I made a Facebook page! And scenes from the week!

| cheriarmour

Yous know I love my social media right?  So it only seemed fitting that I’d make a Facebook page for the blog, and folks seem to be enjoying it.  So here’s the deal, if you love me, and you’d love to interact with me a little more, do a few things for me:

  • Read the blog obviously.
  • Follow me on Bloglovin‘ if you’re a fellow blogger.  (Seriously, the most useful tool for keeping me and all my blogs organized and in one place, rather than logging on to every single blog.)
  • And follow me on my Facebook .  It’s a little more interactive, because there’s no real lag time between when you comment or ask me a question, and when you get a response, either from me, or from another informed reader.

Okay, moving right along, I hope you guys had an amazing 3-day weekend.  Usually I’m a little more service-oriented and reflective on MLK Day, but since I made a little addition to my family…

photo 4

 

…I spent a lot of the day doing laundry, straightening up, vacuuming, and using my degree in Psychology to train my little girl to make sure she only poops outside.  She’s doing so well!  She’s extremely clingy, and she keeps hurting Austin’s feelings, because she’s glued to me, but she could take or leave my husband-to-be.  He texted me yesterday and said “I hope Coco starts to like me more.”

photo 1

 

My shadow and I went for a run yesterday morning.  She’s very tall, and her hair is long.  Is that what I look like?

photo 2

 

GoodNESS, these Raleigh hills kicked my butt.  Look closely at the end of that road.  Mama ran ALL of that.

photo 3

 

The legs got to come out yesterday, and probably for the last time all week.  They’re predicting snow tonight.  Woo-hoo!  Raleigh never gets any good snow!

Remedy

 

And finally, look at this dinner I snagged last night!  Me and the nearly-husband met with some good friends from undergrad at the Remedy Cafe, a little joint that features a lot of local, vegan, and vegetarian items.   I went with friend “chicken” and some veg mac and cheese.  It was awesome, and I split it in half, added a salad, and brought the rest of it for lunch today.

How was your weekend?  Hope it was lovely!

I know, I know, I’m so late with a post!

| cheriarmour

I’m sorry.  But if it makes you feel any better, here is a picture of my cat.

photo-8You can’t be mad at me, most especially when I’m giving you photos of my dear sweet Martin, right?

But I have a good excuse.  I’ve taken a trip down to see my sister in Orlando (she works for Disney), and I will be running in actual balmy temps for once come tomorrow!  Eep!  I’m so excited.

But with all the nasty weather in the country, a trip that should have taken me only half the day, took all day.  I slept on the plane between Raleigh and Charlotte, and thank you Jesus for my running abilities, because, due to the delays, I found myself running in heels through Charlotte Douglas, and quite hungry I might add.

I hunted the airport for something edible that wasn’t Moes or Sbarros, and came up with this, which cost me $6.38.

photo-9Needless to say, Mama was still quite hungry when she finished her expensive “dinner,” and I immediately asked my sister to find me some dinner as soon as she picked me up from the behemoth of an airport that was Orlando’s airport.

So after a harrowing day of travel, Kimmy (the youngest sister) provided me with a glass to ease my travel troubles.

photo-11

 

And the best part?  This is the only wine glass she owns.  I’ve taught her nothing.

So don’t be mad, I promise, I will update you with all the things tomorrow.  But in the meantime, I’ve got a serious question for you. I did my 5 miles on the treadmill at the gym yesterday, January 1st, and the gym was totally dead.  Where was everyone?  When are you starting some of your New Years Resolutions? 

 

 

Happy New Year!

| cheriarmour

Goodbye 2013.  I’m not too sad to see you go.  And I feel like everyone I’ve talked to had one of the most intense years in their life.  And for me, it was no different.

But enough about all that.

Last night, we threw one heck of a New Years Eve party to say goodbye to 2013 (good riddance kinda), and usher in 2014, in what I hope will be one of the best years ever.

NYE
We made some nachos that we (I) inhaled for the festivities.

This is all we have left of a night that was full of laughter, music, champagne, and these amazingly stunning cupcakes that a friend made and brought.  They were tangy and champagny and awesome.

Cupcakes
The guest who brought these said she was planning on these for her sister’s shower. Can I get an invite please? They were so licious!

I only had one of these.  I also stole two extras and hid them in the fridge where no one could find them.  Woops!

So I’m embarking on my first run of 2014, and feeling loved, happy, and extremely hopeful about the upcoming year.  I am so thankful for good friends, good cupcakes, good running, and good alcohol.

 

Merry Christmas Eve!

| cheriarmour

A quick check-in with you all.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday.  I’m finally tucked in in Charlotte with most of the family, but not before I put in a full day in Raleigh.

I started with a plan to leave the homestead for my parents’ around 12 noon, but that was not to be.

Thankfully, I don’t think my mom will be reading this before she gets her gift tomorrow morning, but my dad asked me to stop by the Best Buy to pick up something called the Google Chromecast.  Little did I know that this was such a hot item in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I hit the Best Buy on Capital.  Nope.

I hit the Best Buy near my home. No way.

Wal-Mart told me they had them.  I drove there.  They did not.

I hit Tiger Direct.  They didn’t even stock the item.

I tried the AT&T store.

And finally, I had to call my sister in Charlotte to run to the Best Buy near my parents’, hours after I’d embarked on my journey.

Cooked a little tofu, banged out a nap, and stole away for a few miles before I had to get into the Lancer (which someone hit in the parking lot of Best Buy while I was trying to make my way back home, at this point, almost with tears in my eyes).

Greenway
A swollen Crabtree Creek after a night full of rain.

And…

Greenway 2
Some chilly greenway – if nothing else, Raleigh is hilly!

Anyhoo, I made it. Have a Happy Holiday! I will check in with you guys soon!

With a creative spirit also comes this irritating trait.

| cheriarmour

I’m horribly forgetful.  Horribly, horribly forgetful.  The only way I remember to keep my class schedule and show up to places is that I write every single thing, every single appointment down I have in an appointment  book, and once it’s written, it’s real.

Last week after a Zumba party…
Zumba Party

…I decided in order to keep up with my streak (more on that later), I needed to run, even though it was after 10pm.  But I didn’t want to miss my mile, my honey was gone for the weekend, and I was feeling antsy. So still wearing my Santa hat from the party, I drove to my old condo, which is in a super populated, well-lit area, don’t worry.  I parked my car, hid my keys somewhere in the car, and closed the door.  When I went to test the door to make sure it was still unlocked, I found, much to my immediate horror, that I had locked the door with my keys inside.

Damnit.

I called AAA from my phone, which I’d thankfully not locked in the car, and since in my experience, AAA takes years to get to you to unlock your car, I decided to go for my run, since it was also about 40 degrees out, and I wasn’t necessarily interested in freezing as I waited.  So down the road I went in my purple Moving Comfort jacket and Santa hat.  I’m sure I got a lot of strange looks.

Murphy’s Law must have been at work, because not a half-mile down the road, I got a call, which I answered mid-run from the tow-truck driver.

“Yeah I’ll be there in 10 minutes…”

And in the fastest lockout time in history, I arrived back to my car to the tow truck driver waiting on me.  So I jogged up, and explained to her why I was jogging around downtown at night with a Santa hat on.

Bruise

Now, in completely different news, I discovered this bruise the other night on my thigh, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember how or when I could have whacked myself so hard that me, being the dark-skinned girl that I am, could bruise like this. My forgetfulness at its finest…

Road Rage – have you ever just lost it?

| cheriarmour

Run Selfie

Requisite run selfie. The air in my office was hot, dry, and stagnant yesterday, so I felt like I was escaping prison to be able to get out and run a few miles on the greenway. I also was running with a belly full of holiday cookies – we’d thrown a holiday party for our clients and me, usually cool as a cucumber around office treats, totally lost it on a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Getting my feet to move after that was so difficult.

But I digress. Yesterday, I went to go have cocktails with a girlfriend who got married a year ago. I tell you what, there is no greater resource than a bride who’s been recently married. On my way there, I was feeling good, the endorphins were flowing, and I was in a great mood. I hit some rush hour/holiday traffic around a local shopping center. Still no big deal.

Let me interrupt this story to tell you a pertinent tale.  Years ago, I was in Manhattan with my dad.  The traffic there is obviously horrible and my dad pulled into an intersection without checking to make sure that the traffic on the other side would move, and by the time the light turned red, my dad was stuck in the intersection.  A cop was riding by at that moment,  pulled us over, and gave my dad a ticket for like obstructing the flow of traffic or something.  From that, I always understood that you waited to make sure that traffic would clear the intersection before you pulled through.

So back to yesterday.  Traffic was beginning to back up into the intersection, so I patiently waited for it to clear before I pulled through.  The woman behind me honked.  One thing about North Carolina, you don’t honk.  I gave her a look in my rearview, and assured myself that she had to see that the intersection wasn’t clear, and that we’d be blocking up traffic.  She honked again, and then started pulling around me to pull into the intersection.  And that’s when I lost it.  The left hand came up.  My voice rose an octave.  The New York in me came out.

“No. NO. NO.  THAT IS NOT HOW WE DO THINGS HERE!”

And she looked frightened.

“Absolutely not.  You get back where you belong!”

And she did.

I’m not sure what exactly came over me, but as I age (I’m 26) my tolerance for people’s rudeness gets smaller and smaller, and I’m a little more willing to stand up for what’s right – in this case, my right to avoid a ticket!

When was the last time you lost it in traffic?  

Jingle Ball!

| cheriarmour

Before we get started, a moment of reflection for Nelson Mandela, who passed away yesterday at the age of 95.

When I was watching coverage about his passing on CNN, a few things really struck me.  One, all the video they showed of him, he was smiling and dancing, which is exactly how I’m sure he would have like to be remembered.  And the second thing came this morning, where a friend of Nelson Mandela’s stated that he didn’t view this loss as Mandela’s death, but as freeing his spirit from an ailing body.  I just love that.

Will

The man also never ages.  I was watching video from his 90th Birthday party, where my favorite fellow Jew, Amy Winehouse, performed, which was right after she’d won a bunch of Grammy Awards.  I loved the video because you’ve got Mandiba, who at the time is 90, and is watching this little squirrel of a jazz singer scurry all over the stage.  At one point, you see an aid of Mr. Mandela’s sort of motion toward Amy and try to explain what she is.  It’s so cute.

But really, nothing I can say here will do Nelson Mandela any justice.  He was, and is a beautiful spirit.

Now, speaking of some beautiful spirits – The Jingle Ball last night in Raleigh.  So, I talked about it  before, but basically, the Jingle Ball is a beautiful ball, and the price for admission is a child’s toy, valued between like $20 and $30.  So me, Austin, and my friend Kim from undergrad orchestrated an evening where I was still able to run, teach my class, shower at the gym, and still get to the ball with plenty of time to party and dance.

Toys
This isn’t even all of the toys collected. The mountain was so huge, I had chills just looking at it.

 

Rocky Top Catering did the food, there were free drinks, and the DJ was so bomb, that I got his card for our wedding.  I saw everyone that was anyone in Raleigh, realtors, everyone from run club (cause runners are amazing nice people, duh), and a few folks from my job.  The best part of the night happened when the DJ proposed to his girlfriend on stage, stating “Baby, we’re not going ring shopping this weekend.” CAUSE HE ALREADY BOUGHT THE RING OMGOMGGOMG!

dress

 

The second best part of the night, other than getting to dance it away with my future husband and good friends was when I realized that with my beautiful and expensive ModCloth dress, I had completed the look by forgetting and leaving my Garmin on my wrist.  So as the night was wrapping up, I made sure I took a pic in my beautiful dress (that had pockets and a stunning neckline and garnered a million compliments) and my Garmin 610.  Happy Holidays!

I was riding into work yesterday morning…

| cheriarmour

…And I have a pretty short commute to work, lucky for me, it’s only about 10 minutes long.  And I have a confession.

I hate, hate, hate morning radio.

It rarely appeals to anyone over the age of 12 because that’s exactly the kind of “humor” it plays to.  Infantile, juvenile, and often offensive, just like preteens tend to be.

Well, here in the great capital city of Raleigh, there’s this show called “Bob & the Showgram”.  And I won’t be a jerk, it’s not all bad.  From what I understand, Bob, the host of the show, had a brain tumor, and now he raises money for pediatric brain tumors.  And that’s awesome.  It is, however, one of the most offensive dark spots in an otherwise very progressive city.

At last year’s Christmas parade, someone at the station had the bright idea to suspend  “Tyrone the Black Christmas Fairy” from the bed of a pickup truck, which drew some really negative attention – even the Mayor had something to say about it.

Tyrone

There were even rumors that someone at the station was fired for it.  What escapes me is how suspending a black person from anything is a good idea, especially given the history of our country, but that’s another essay, for another blog, for another day.

So on my ride in, I happened to flip to that offending station, and around 9:00 am, Bob started making offensive comments about gay men.  Some of them are a little too much to repeat here, but it wrapped up with him comparing gay men to pedophiles.

I was floored. Is this 1950?  Firstly, sexuality isn’t necessarily something that needs to be discussed in the joking context of a morning program.  Secondly. comparing someones sexuality to deviant behavior that is damaging not only physically, but mentally, and spiritually to a child is beyond small-minded, it’s just wrong.

So I went to work, and in the course of the day, I emailed the program director at the station, Zac, and expressed my displeasure at the whole situation.  I got a response!

“Cheri,

Thanks for your email.

We met with the Morning Show after they got off the air.

We discussed the topic and how it could be offensive.

I really appreciate your feedback,

Zac”

I know it’s not much, but I’ll be damned, I made a teensy, tiny, itty-bitty little splash in the inbox of the director.  I know Bob has probably learned nothing, and will continue ranting on whatever, but I loved the feeling of making a little difference.